Top Quiz review

Top Quiz is a new social game from Top Free Games, makers of the popular Bike Race game on iOS. The new game is available on Facebook, iOS and Android and supports cross-platform play via the social network. This review is based on the Facebook version.

Top Quiz is a simple asynchronous multiple-choice trivia game that allows players to compete against friends and random strangers in a battle of wits. Upon choosing to start a new game, players are presented with a choice of three different topics and their corresponding question types. The available topics may be “shuffled” for an outlay of in-game currency, and additional topics may also be purchased to add to the mix using in-game currency either earned through play or acquired through in-app purchase.

Once into the game proper, players work their way through five multiple-choice questions and are timed on how quickly they answer. The game turn is then sent to their opponent via notification, and the other player gets a chance at the same questions. A winner of the round is then determined according to who got the most answers correct and, in case of ties, who answered most quickly.

Questions primarily take the form of either text-based hints or image clues and are rarely phrased as an explicit question. For example, in the Music category, which uses text-based hints, the question is simply the title of a song which the player must identify the artist of. In the case of image rounds, players must simply identify the choice which corresponds to the picture.

In-game currency may be spent on a number of different things. There are the “shuffle” and new topic purchase options mentioned above, and a poor round may be retried for an outlay of in-game currency. However, to prevent this becoming a “pay to win” function, retrying a round returns the player to the topic selection screen, meaning they must start again rather than simply attempting to answer the same questions more quickly. This is a sensible choice, as the game tells players what the right answer was if they get a question incorrect.

Boost items may be purchased before a new round begins, too. These include the facility to temporarily freeze the timer and two “bomb” options that remove two or three wrong answers — the latter option is essentially a “tell me what the answer is” button, since there are only four possible responses per question. Since the timer moves quite quickly, though, players who make use of boosts may not necessarily be the quickest to respond, meaning even the most effective bomb item isn’t a guarantee of victory unless the player is very quick to click on the correct answer.

Top Quiz is a simple but effective game. It’s a fairly no-frills experience — the graphics are limited to copy-pasted logos and line art drawings of celebrities and the sound is little more than clicks and bleeps to provide interface feedback — but it does its job quite effectively. The asychronous play system is implemented well, and the fact it’s possible to play cross-platform via Facebook, iOS and Android will help to make this a highly social game between players on a wide variety of different devices. Whether or not the game has the legs to survive in the long term remains to be seen, however. How long it lasts will depend entirely on both the quantity and quality of questions available — at present, it’s too early to tell whether or not the game will enjoy success in the long term, but for the moment, at least, it provides a good experience for its players.

Top Quiz is currently in the 100,000+ MAU tier with a rank of 1,495, and the 10,000+ DAU tier with a rank of 1,481. Follow its progress with AppData, our tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

A solid, no-frills quiz experience — but it remains to be seen whether this game does enough to keep players’ attention in the long term.